Personal Success & Unconscious Beliefs - Part II

This is a continuation in series for personal development and personal success. I’d like to talk about my favorite subject…beliefs!

In the Personal Success & Unconscious Beliefs – Part I, I discussed ‘beliefs 101’ and now I’d like to continue with…

Where Do Unconscious Beliefs Come From?

Our beliefs are entrenched within us just like skin on our body. It is part of us. When we developed these beliefs we attached behaviors to them. The formulation of those beliefs may have occurred a long time ago. However the behaviors are present in our everyday life. Recognizing the history of these beliefs is often possible with the help of K-P-C. With strict “coaching” it is often difficult to discover the root cause of a belief.  However, before a belief begins the idea must be first accepted, I call this a ‘limiting decision.’  At some point a person makes a decision to accept a belief, and this is where the mental strength tools of K-P-C come in handy.

Moving forward can be achieved by recognizing the belief that underpins a behavior and deciding whether this belief is something you still want to hold on to. You can stop the behavior by stopping the belief. You can do more to stop a particular behavior if you have a stronger belief attached to it. Although this does take considerable mental strength, it can be effective.  With the help of a coach and a K-P-C program this process can be significantly expedited.

An example of working on a limiting belief independently might be recognizing that the behavior of using negative language does not support the belief of being positive. You decide to observe your language closely and remove language that is negative and not aligned with your belief. If you wanted to understand the reason why you talk in a negative way you may decide to explore when you started to do this and what it is that you believe in. Depending on your environment at the time you will have interpreted or thought about the belief in a particular context. Your feelings would have impacted on your interpretation of the belief and then your behavior would have been formed as a result of this process.

Unconscious Beliefs most likely come from our past experiences, as Kant suggests in his theory. There is a belief amongst many theorists that those experiences that occur when we are very young make the most lasting impression and lead to beliefs that are hard to shake. The truth of the origin of Unconscious Beliefs has been and most probably will continue to be talked about throughout time by philosophers, therapists and other practitioners.

Our beliefs inform our behaviors. They were learned at some stage in our life. We have practiced them so much now that they are automated. We commit to these behaviors everyday as they are part of us.

We may be able to move forward by simply discerning what the Unconscious Belief is, without having to uncover its origin. Sometimes all that is needed is to just get clear on what the Unconscious Belief is which may be enough to empower us and free us from old patterns of behavior.

Other times we may feel the need to explore the source of an Unconscious Belief that has been dominating our life. By identifying both the Unconscious Belief and its source, we may then find release from it and be able to move forward. However, be aware, it is not always possible to easily determine the source of an Unconscious Belief. Human behavior is complex. It flows from a combination of cognitive, emotional, and spiritual elements. It may never be possible to discern the exact origin of an Unconscious Belief.

It‘s important to remember that many Unconscious Beliefs support positive behavior. It can be empowering to remember the relationship between a positive outcome in our life and our belief in making this happen. By seeing the connection between our beliefs, goals and outcomes in a positive light, we can take this learning into other aspects of our life to more clearly see the relationship between our behavior and our beliefs.

Some Unconscious Beliefs also support a combination of positive and negative behaviors. For example, if you have an Unconscious Belief to being a devoted life partner this will have positive effects on your relationship; however, taken to the extreme, there could be situations or circumstances where this Unconscious Belief could have negative effects such as stifling the other person or being inattentive to your self. Simply being aware of an Unconscious Belief can help you to make choices as different circumstances arise. Observe the ease in which you achieve goals when your beliefs are aligned with your goals and where you want to go in life.

Fear of Letting Go

Have you ever spoken to a person who openly admits that there is an element of their life that doesn‘t really work for them, but they don‘t know how to change it or are too afraid to do this? What then is the fundamental difference between a person who decides to let go of a belief that doesn‘t support them and someone who holds on to it and never lets it go? What you will observe over time is that the person who lets go of a belief that doesn‘t support them seems to be going places in life. They are excited about life and invigorated by it. They seem driven and focused. The person who didn‘t let go of the belief will still be talking about this same belief years to come and not only that but over time they may grow resentful of their “luck” in life and how other people seem to have an easy life.

The moment in time when you choose to keep a belief that doesn‘t work for you is the moment in time where you fundamentally deceive yourself and decide to deny yourself the right to a great life. You decide that the best is not for you, it is too hard to attain or you may even go to that place of convincing yourself that a great life is not really possible. This internal conversation you are having is built around a belief, a belief about your self worth. You can choose to keep it or over ride it.

Let’s play out the life that keeps this belief. Every year you reinforce in every decision you make that you are not worthy. Life becomes more difficult and over time your self esteem starts to plummet. Seeing a new way of doing things becomes so far away and impossible and so over time you give up.

Let’s now go to the person who throws away the belief that they are not worthy and instead works on building their sense of self worth. They begin to achieve, they feel stronger, they are happier, they are smiling all the time and find that people are attracted to them. They appear to always have good fortune or a great life. They chose this pathway. They look for the positivity in each moment, they look for internal peace. This way of seeing life, having hope and belief, has been the way extraordinary people have survived even in the most difficult situations. In the movie “Life is Beautiful” a man decides to believe in hope and to try to see the beauty around him even in a concentration camp during the World War II. Whatever was going to happen to him, he had inner peace and knew this. No one could take this from him. This belief has sustained people in the most challenging moments in their life.

So we know that having beliefs that support us are critical to our well being. Yet we intellectualize living without these beliefs and we go into a space of uncertainty. Uncertainty creates fear and fear prevents us from moving forward or changing things. Checking in with yourself emotionally means you can ascertain if you really must change your belief. Your intellect will rationalize all the reasons for keeping it but emotionally you will feel what is best for you. Ignoring your emotions and how you feel about your beliefs is accepting that you are not worthy.

Well I’m going to leave it at this for now. I think this is enough information, if you take it to heart and contemplate the above information, you’ll begin to discover, or at least…get a hint of some of your unsupportive Unconscious Beliefs that have been holding you back from reaching your personal goals and personal success.

OK…what do you think so far?  Please let me know in the comments below.

If you don’t want to wait for the next post on unconscious beliefs and start a personal exploration on your own unconscious beliefs request an Introductory Consultation today.

Roland Gilbert

Roland N. Gilbert is Vice-President and founder of the Perennial Consulting Group a management consulting, coaching and sales force development firm that focuses on overcoming fear and other limiting beliefs and creating empowering solutions so that individuals can live out their passions!